Commentary

Mere months after her takeover, Christina Hardwick, BEAMSCO’S new CEO, is facing time behind bars.

“I’ll be getting locked up on November 9th, 2016,” said Hardwick. “I’m trying to get my bail money together before I become a Jailbird in Vermilion County’s MDA Lock-Up event.”

Hardwick is doing a little time, to do a lot of good! She’s getting ‘locked-up’ to join in the fight to free kids and adults from the harm of muscular dystrophy, ALS and related life-threatening diseases.

After fifteen years we are activating our BEAMSCO continuation plan. Founder Steve Foster will retire and continue as a Sales Associate, and consultant on a limited basis. Employee Christina Hardwick will be assuming day to day operations, and acquire the business. No other changes, as far as addresses and phone numbers, have occurred. In the Office hours are generally 9AM to 3PM or by appointment.

Following are details of this announcement printed in June’s issue of the Vermilion Advantage News and Views…

Changes are on the horizon for a business that has been supporting Vermilion County businesses’ and organizations’ online presence for more than 15 years. Business E-commerce Applications Marketing Services Company (BEAMSCO) founder Steve Foster will retire and Christina Hardwick will acquire the business and oversee daily operations beginning July 1. Foster will remain at BEAMSCO as a consultant and sales associate.

Hardwick has provided internet marketing services and built websites nationally for various businesses and organizations since 2001. She has been working with Foster, servicing BEAMSCO clients, since 2014. She appreciates the opportunity to service clients of all sizes, from small business owners to global businesses.

The Early Years (Since 2001 – Our History)

The company originally grew out of the need to create a greater awareness of the goods and services available in the local community, Foster said. At the time, Foster was serving on the Danville City Council and was involved in an economic development study that resulted in the establishment of a community portal featuring an extensive business and service directory called “All around Danville.” BEAMSCO replaced that directory in 2007 with www.ILLIANATODAY.com, a current popular portal and directory for businesses and organizations in east-central Illinois and west-central Indiana, he notes.

The Company (Changes with the internet the past 15 years – our solutions for you)

“BEAMSCO has created and developed hundreds of websites for retail, industrial, and service businesses, as well as governmental and public and private organizations, and non-profits,” Foster said. “Personal and special interest websites are also part of the portfolio.”

Over the past decade and a half, changes in the internet, browsers and operating systems quickly outdated websites and some of their functions. This kept BEAMSCO busy with continual updating of many sites, while continuing to create new sites, Foster explains. Recent factors, such as smartphone and tablet compatibility, social media interactions, and continuous changes to search engines have greatly increased the close relationship BEAMSCO has with its clients.

“In addition to websites and shopping carts, BEAMSCO has expanded services to include mobile-friendly and responsive websites,” Foster also said. “BEAMSCO Websites now feature systems to allow clients to easily change text and photos themselves.” He adds that search engine optimization (SEO) is needed to keep website links appearing in prime positions when someone searches online.

(What’s next)…

This summer, Foster and Hardwick are visiting more than 100 active BEAMSCO clients to ensure the most recent innovations are part of their internet marketing program. “We want the best results for each of our current clients and our new BEAMSCO family members too,” Foster said. One of the chief features of BEAMSCO service is being a local internet developer, which allows for quick accessibility.

BEAMSCO is still located at 3716 N. Vermilion Street in Danville. Visit www.beamsco.com to learn more about the services they provide.

Chris is very talented in her work and looks forward to many years of continued reliable and professional service for all your internet marketing needs.

Companies both large and small seem to realize the value more and more of close relations with their web and marketing developers. Unlike many international internet marketing groups, like the various shades of yellow pages (and books), web developers must be quickly accessible and dependable for quick updates and personal tutoring for clients who have staff maintaining part of their websites.

New clients coming to BEAMSO often come because of lack of personal services from international marketing companies. With BEAMSCO our dependable staff becomes your IT staff as well. 15 years this fall with the same voice answering 217 442 0823 – call us to join us!

Like May, we have seen an increase in internet marketing. For the first time in nearly 15 years we are pressed to complete revisions and new websites for our area. We made some reorganization changes in mid May that look promising for 2015 and on.

In one area, we have added to our staff two new associates one is great on WordPress and related content management software, and PHP script; and the other can write code in any language and create great custom plugins and server managment. So give us a call if you need changes on existing websites or would like to discuss your internet marketing needs with us.

It seems business activity is picking up for our current clients this spring, we are working on new client websites as well. Check out our portfolio additions for May. We have several webs to wrap up and they will appear in our June portfolio additions.

Well you guessed it, it has finally come down to this.. We have been talking with some of our current clients and of course prospective ones, and I have even sat in on a couple of these companies’ sales pitches to our clients. Customer opinions and ours is these are some hard pushy sales people. As I sat in listening to his sales pitch (let me remind you I just rebuilt one woman’s website, completely responsive and mobile) he tore the site apart claiming we didn’t have the technology.. really? Steve aside, I have been in this industry for almost 20 years and I keep up on every new trend. Secondly, the salesman really pushed her paid advertising online, I mean huge budgets! Most of the companies we deal with are small business and I do my best to do their online marketing at a fair price.

Let me tell you about a local company that contacted me for help to get her out of her hibu contract. These people firstly never finished her website but had been billing her for 4 months. They also asked for a decent size down payment, and monthly payments of $99. So after I called hibu from her office for her they told me “sure they can cancel her contract” (which she then did), come to find out they still kept billing this poor woman, and did not refund the deposit. She had to contact her bank and spent weeks fighting their collections department. I wish there was more I could have done.

Another local client could not stop them from taking auto-withdraws from his bank account, even after many calls to cancel, the web was finally removed – but they owned his own company’s website address name (URL) and he lost it.

Just one more: One area client bought a restaurant that had a hibu yellow-book site with the former owner’s name and other incorrect information, even menu prices. The new owner called and canceled renewal of the old site and the yellow-book ad. After many subsequent calls the web is still live online and they will neither make corrections or remove the website. These businesses are all in the Danville area.

The best thing you can do if you work with big international companies like hibu, dex or whatever they will change their name to next… read and reread your contract. Make sure you can get out of it if you need to. watch out for their up-sells, it doesn’t matter to me if you decide to work with BEAMSCO or another local design company. My suggestion, shop around, don’t fall for their high pressure, buzzword ridden sales pitches. If you want to shoot me an email I’d be more then happy to see if there is anything we could do to help you TRY and get out of the contracts. Small business is what built this economy, and big business like them are running it into the ground

Don’t believe our clients or us? Look for yourself. Click the links below and see how some of these companies are taking others for every dime they can, initially and by the month for years.

Is Your Website Outdated? Do you have any of the following issues?BEAMSCO addresses several problematic internet issues affecting some websites each day!

We are now in our 14th year providing Internet Marketing services to our many clients including initial website production, maintenance; web updates, previous revisions, mobile versions of present webs, and changes to websites affecting Search Engine Optimization status. We have seen many issues appear with websites during this past decade…Things Change Rapidly: Worldwide, and for many website owners and our clients too, we have seen some increasing website function issues, email security & email form problems issues, and other concerns, which we have been addressing for some time on a client by client basis. We feel it may be beneficial to consider any needed modifications on your website if following issues are present!The Problem and issues: Over the past few years we have seen accelerated revisions of not only Operating Systems i.e: Windows 95, Windows 98, to later systems like Windows XP (which some of you still use) to Windows 7, Windows 8, and coming, Windows 10. Mac users have seen similar changes. Browsers also have changed continuously with all the Windows versions from IE7 to IE10, and new-comers like Firefox and Google Chrome browsers.To add to the issues, modern wide screen monitors and various monitor appearance settings distort some web appearances, and new smart phones hinder readability of many webs on their small screens, requiring that we also construct a second mobile web application for corrected readability and appearance on cell phones. Many users nowadays rely nearly 100% on their cell phones for all internet activity.The Results: Many of us with websites are experiencing continuing issues of Compatibility & Compliance and also increasingly obsolete initial website creation software that were state of the art just a few years ago. The result is occasionally older websites and forms no longer may appear and function like they once did when using these newer Browsers and operating systems. Also there have been security issues under certain conditions.To Add More to the problem: Search engines like Google, Yahoo, BING, etc have ambiguous rules and formulas to determine how a website will be ranked, or who gets on the first page of the search engine results. The very rules that we used for our new websites from 2001 to recently have been modified or even reversed. This is why you get so many emails offering SEO services (Search Engine Optimization). This can be an expensive fix when done separate of new website creation, and SEO requires a great deal of expertise and work to bring sites to 80% or 100% compatible range.What BEAMSCO has done & is doing right now about this, and why you need to see us or your webmaster: BEAMSCO website’s average age is about five (5) years since the initial build; how old is your site?. Many of the sites no longer have a “modern” look. Over the past five years we have seen exponential expansions of issues affecting older websites. We have updated many of our older websites last year and this year, including our own website you are now viewing – please visit our sample portfolio links on the bottom of our Home page, or the Portfolio sample page, to allow you to view a few of our more recent websites, and to give you an idea of a newer look.What’s Next: We suggest you contact us for a free consultation. If you need revisions just call us and we will work you into our current schedule.Last: If you are satisfied with your website look and search engine results, we see no reason (at the present time) for some of you to have to update your site; it could function well enough for your purposes for some time. But many of you may want to change text on pages and/or photos, and add new features, like the ability to make many changes of text and photos yourself; if this is your case, this would be a good opportunity for a state of the art modernization, and perhaps a mobile web application installed too.

We currently offer revisions, Mobile web versions, and SEO work at reduced bundled rates…give us a call at 217 442 0823

As with all things for the new year, BEAMSCO is getting ready to roll out a new website, a new batch of products and services to help our customers get a jump into business. Dont miss out on the changes that happen everyday on the internet. From mobile to drones BEAMSCO plans on being at the forefront of these evolving technologies and hope to bring our customers along with us!